Everyone has listened to the pain and suffering of others. You may also have suggested an answer to them: “Let’s get over it” or “Let’s beat it”. Is overcoming pain and suffering the only answer? Everyone has their own way of dealing with ordeals, but pain may not be needed to overcome an ordeal. I think the answer is not to fall into despair, but to let it go naturally by simply saying, it was hard then. I want to introduce the drama, “This is us.” In this drama, the famous line is, “I like to think that maybe one day you’ll be an old man like me talking a younger man’s ear off, explaining to one how you took the sourest lemon that life has to offer and turned it into something resembling lemonade.” Let’s look at why the line is so great.

It is a story about a father and mother, Jack and Rebecca, and their children, Kevin, Kate, Randall, and Rebecca’s gynecologist, Kay. Rebecca is pregnant with triplets and Kay tells her that she is very likely to abort because of triplets. In the end, Kay can’t save the third child despite performing surgery to save it. Kay tells his own story to Rebecca and Jack in sorrow. With Kay’s story, Jack, Rebecca, and the children’s lives change. Kay says to Jack, “I like to think that maybe one day, you’ll be an old man like me talking a younger man’s ear off, to explain to him how you took the sourest lemon that life has to offer and turned it into something resembling lemonade.” Kay has also lost his son. He says he has never forgotten his son for a moment. But now he calmly tells Jack that he has lost his son. Kay also turns a sour lemon into lemonade. At the time a firefighter comes to the hospital with an abandoned newborn baby from in front of the fire station. As a destiny, Jack decides to adopt the baby. This is Randall. Randall becomes a capable worker, but has a hard time thinking about his father, William, who abandoned him. As he works at a company, he thinks about William dozens of times. However, on the surface he turns away from the desire to see his biological father because he is obsessed with the thought that he abandoned Randall. In the end, he goes to visit him and aggressively asks, “Why did you leave me?”, “I have become a capable worker thanks to meeting parents who are much better than you”, but eventually Randall decides to be more candid in his inner thoughts. Randall tells William he has wanted to see him, and William explains to Randall one by one why he left him behind and why the place was a fire station. Eventually, Randall understands William and his ordeal. Like Kay's famous line, he calmly talks about the existence of William and what happened to his family. Since then Randall consoles by telling the story of how to change sour lemons to lemonade when someone is in despair.

I hope that you read this article and learn that overcoming ordeals is not the only answer. Instead of trying to overcome it, try to face ordeals with your own answers. Gachon University students may have their own sour lemons. Hopefully, the day will come when you can talk about how you changed them into lemonade.